1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to brush rakes, and more specifically to a brush rake for mounting on the articulated boom of an excavator.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Land clearing operations, such as cutting a roadway through a forest, include felling of trees followed by removal of logs, stumps, plant roots and brush. An excavator equipped with a boom, an arm attached to the boom, and a thumb and bucket attached to a free end of the arm, can grasp and remove stumps. Neither a thumb nor a bucket are suitable for removal of plants roots and brush, however, because their teeth are too short and both lack sufficient breadth to cut a wide swath through roots and brush in a single pass. Therefore, prior to my invention, the conventional method for removing plant roots and brush has been to disattach the bucket and mount a brush grapple to the free end of the arm; then, once the plant roots and brush were torn out of the ground in the vicinity of the excavator with the brush grapple, the brush grapple was disattached and the bucket was reattached to the arm preparatory to removal of additional stumps. The necessity for repeated and alternating attachment and disattachment of the bucket and brush grapple significantly slowed land clearing operations.